Lady White Co. and Phigvel’s debut collaboration was novel but nice. Neither the decade-old Californian jersey experts nor the 23-year-old Japanese Americana obsessives had previously partnered on a collaborative collection and the results were exemplary of both their strengths, guiding each towards fresh terrain. In Lady White’s case, that meant workwear-inclined wearables and for Phigvel, urbane staples with a modernist bent. 

But though these two kindred spirits, united by a shared sense of patient design, may have nailed a capsule wardrobe on their first go-round, there’s still much ground to cover. By foot, no less. 

For their second, more concise partnership, Lady White and Phigvel created a two-piece set of top-tier leather footwear.

These shoes borrow the shape of the sturdy zip-up boots that the duo produced in 2024. However, this time, the top was chopped off to create a chunky leather slip-on. 

Phigvel produced the shoes in Tokyo’s shoemaking hub of Asakusa from vegetable-tanned calf skin sourced from Italy — where a special dye had to be developed for the charcoal colorway — that was Goodyear-welted to the shoe’s heeled leather sole, making the $530 slip-ons both tough and waterproof.

These traditionally made shoes fit into one of the rare gaps in Lady White’s ultra-refined offering. While the brand was quite literally born to produce the perfect white tees — slow-made on specialty knitting machines by local family-owned factories of American cotton — its range has expanded significantly over the past decade.

But Lady White has yet to produce its own in-house leather footwear. With labels like Reproduction of Found, it has produced several iterations of militaristic sneakers, but nothing quite like these.

It took Phigvel for Lady White to find a fellow traveler capable of creating leather shoes that live up to its exacting standards. And what leather shoes they are.

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